Seething Soul
by The Mysterious Traveller
Summary: As he and his killer Solid Snake do battle for the first time since Zanzibar the mysterious warrior known only as 'the ninja' contemplates his life...his reason for living on after his death...


Seething Soul  
  
  
  
So cold...yet I am always burning with passion.  
My body is cold and yet is a raging living inferno that was created to fight and can never do anything but.  
My strength is formidable and there are many men in this world who would kill to feel as I do.  
And the cruel joke about my new life is that to feel this way I HAD to die!  
I was once a man. And what a man I was. I was one of the greatest Soldiers alive. So ruthless and fearless in the face of death and the heat of conflict that I was the only man in Unit Fox-Hound ever to earn the covetted code-name 'Fox'.  
That was what seems to me to have been a life-time ago.  
It was...only it wasn't my life.  
I was a man.  
I was Gray Fox.  
Now...  
Ever since Zanzibar I have been an avenging phantom. Ever since my final battle with him I have been no more than a spectre, howling in the empty cold place that exists between this life and the next, unable to live the life that was once mine and yet I cannot return to the earth from which I was born.  
My life is done and yet not completed.  
There is still one more thing left which I must do before I can leave this world of pain and suffering.  
This world of lights.  
Solid Snake.  
I must meet him one last time for a final battle.  
Will I kill him or he kill me?   
It makes no difference.  
Whatever the conclusion of the dreaded hour I know one thing.  
On that day, in that feared moment it will all finally, at last be over for one of us.  
This is not that day.  
Even though he stands before me standing tall, appearing to me as very much the warrior I remember him to be when we met in my other life, I know for sure that this is not our last meeting in this world.  
Another day will arrive and that will be my chance to finish my purpose and then I will disappear forever.  
The pain...burning pain shooting through my face.  
I remember! That punch!  
Only Snake could deliver such a powerful blow filled with the strength borne of one who was born to live in the battlefield and fight until his time comes and his time is done.  
That is why he and I are truly the same.  
Both of us are opposite sides of the same coin. One can become the other at a moments notice.  
We are the bastards of this uncaring world and have no other lives than those we live in the moment.  
The burning fire of combat! The only thing I still feel that which I felt when I was Gray Fox.  
That's a lie though. I still feel two other things other than lust for the adrenaline rush.  
Guilt and the faint traces of...  
What is the latter?  
No I can't remember. It's gone. The other thing has faded from my concious mind like dawn into dusk and I no longer know whatit was.  
Something emerges from my dormant emotions as I activate my Optic Stealth Camoflauge and prepare to try and take him unawares.  
It's no use. He'll defeat me anyway. Against Snake trickery is poweerless.  
But this is only a passing thought.  
Becase although my body screams with pain and flows with adrenaline as I do battle with the greatest Soldier in this world I am able to keep the single name in my mind this time.  
Naomi...  
She's responsible for the way I acted outside of battle. And I don't know how but I somehow know that she's also got something to do with the other emotion that is lost to me.  
The guilt is due to the knowledge that always lives with me. Knowing that I killed the parents of that frightened little girl who I found in the bushes has been killing me in both lives.  
Compared to that eating away at me my 'death' at Snakes hands in Outer-Heaven could be shrugged off hardly noticed.  
She's my one connection to a past which doesn't involve violence and I never want to lose that but somehow deep down inside of me I know that to ever have any hope of finding peace this is something which I will be forced to do.  
Goodbye Naomi.  
May the good spirits keep you safe.  
And yet...something that I can't remember...Is it something horrible?  
No.  
It wasn't but I still don't know what else it possibly could be.  
Can't somebody help me please?  
Please!  
I scream, a sound pure and filled with the raging agony and despair of a lost soul wholly ruined and never able to hope of ever finding peace again.  
I hardly feel the fresh pain through my cybernetic mask as I pound my head against the steel floor.  
I can hardly think at all.  
The mediciiiiiiiiiiiine.....  
NO!!!!  
I must be strong!  
As I struggle to my feet swaying as if I have just recovered from a feverish slumber the dark mist fades and I see HIM before me.  
Solid Snake.  
And he knows. I can see it in his eyes that he knows who I am.  
Or rather who I used to be.  
What I might have been.  
And I know something now as well.  
Snake's my I only hope. He's my one chance of release from the world. This prison that is, this accursed 'life' thrust upon my by that bastard Clarke.  
He can free me from this nightmare.  
I know he can.  
So I can't worry any more.  
Before I know it I've landed on the other side of the laboratory and I'm switching on my stealth.  
As I flee the smashed and ruined lab one last thought trickles through my numb mind.  
Snake...You've got to come.  
I know you can because you must.  
My mind goes blank.  
The world in front of me turns grey and is devoid now of life.  
My soul is asleep.  
  
  
Notes from the author: Well that's it! Hope you enjoyed that. I'm sorry if it seemed to be a bit rambling but once I got started I just couldn't stop. Anyway see ya soon okay?!!  
  
  
- The Mysterious Traveller drops a rose to the grass before departing like a shadow of the wind - 


End file.
